Guest blog – Protecting the knackered by Jean-Luc Solandt

Jean-Luc Solandt is a marine biologist struggling to get out of a policy expert. He worked on coral reef ecology for 15 years, providing diving survey data for the creation of Marine Protected Areas. He’s been working in the UK at the Marine Conservation Society for over 13 years on developing networks of MPAs, making…

Defra – what are you for? (4)

This government has been hopeless at doing things for nature. Almost completely hopeless. The Marine and Coastal Access Act received Royal Assent in November 2009. Then there was a general election in May 2010 and everything ground to a halt. Defra has dropped several proposed Marine Conservation Zones from the current consultation because of ‘economic…

Don’t leave them short

I won’t be buying any boardshorts, as surfing looks to me as easy as falling off a log and just as much fun (a bit like skiing really).  But if I were going to buy some smart cool shorts then I would like the idea of them being recycled from beach and ocean plastics. That…

Minox challenge – MARINElife by Andrew McLeish

Why MARINElife deserves the public’s support If you were a traveller, holiday-maker or whale watching enthusiast in the mid 90’s you may have been among the hundreds of thousands of people who travelled across the Bay of Biscay on board P&O’s flagship ferry service ‘The Pride of Bilbao’. The ‘Billy’ as she was fondly known…

All gummed up – chew on that IMO!

All those auks killed off the south coast of England over the last week or so have been killed by polyisobutene (or PIB) according to analyses done by scientists at the University of Plymouth and confirmed by the Environment Agency, says the RSPB. PIB is currently given one of the lowest hazard classifications under MARPOL…